


Break the Key in the Rusted Lock

by St_Salieri



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Original Character(s), Season/Series 08, Supernatural and J2 Big Bang Challenge 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-30
Updated: 2013-07-30
Packaged: 2017-12-21 20:12:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 23,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/904409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/St_Salieri/pseuds/St_Salieri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As a boy, Sam had always thought that books were doorways to different worlds. He never expected to find one that literally was.  A mysterious volume discovered while Sam prepares for his trials causes the lives of the Winchester brothers and a librarian from South Dakota to intersect, and their meeting might lead to the end of the world.</p><p><b>Warnings:</b> Character death (not Sam or Dean), general spoilers for S8 (takes place after episode 8.14)</p><p>Please see on_verra's <a href="http://on-verra.livejournal.com/6601.html">Art Master Post</a>!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue and Chapter One

 

 

 

The book itself was nothing special to look at. The spine was cracked, the red faux leather crumbling at the corners of the battered cover. It was impossible to make out the title, as only the faintest traces of gold leaf remained where the letters had been rubbed away. A symbol had been pressed into the cover long ago, but its edges had been worn down over the years until it was difficult to make out what it was.

Helen sighed and dumped the book on top of the stack already sitting on her desk for processing. As of her most recent promotion she was officially head librarian of this small suburban branch. It would have been within her rights to farm out this job to one of the newer hires, but over the past decade she'd become used to having her office taken over with piles of books and magazines. She supposed it was a combination of nostalgia and inertia that kept her from handing the task over to someone else.

Publicly, she and the other librarians had nothing but praise for the citizens of Sioux Falls who so generously offered up their used books. Privately, every last one of them dreaded the semiannual book drive. For every book that was donated in a condition good enough for sale, they received at least three that were so worthless that they ended costing the library money to recycle or destroy. Piles of dog-eared romance paperbacks (half of them with missing covers) ended up in boxes in Helen's office, along with old volumes of _National Geographic_ , complete sets of _Encyclopedia Britannica_ that were at least thirty years out of date, and occasionally some vintage pornography. (The latter found a way of disappearing before it could be disposed of. Helen suspected Joe, the night janitor, but she never confronted him about it. After all, he was kind of doing her a favor, and she really didn't want to know any of the details.) But there were always some unexpected treasures, too – like the time old Mrs. Garrett had willed her entire personal collection to the local library, a collection that turned out to contain a couple of rare first editions. Unfortunately, those gems were few and far between. The librarians always managed to keep up a façade of grateful enthusiasm, even when they quietly rolled their eyes and shelved most of the offerings on the five-cent shelf. After all, the public liked being able to feel as if they were helping out. The money raised from the book sales wasn't much, but they'd been able to buy a new rocking chair for the children's room and make a few other small improvements to the building.

Her pipe dream was a computer for the reference desk – maybe one of the new Commodore 64s. It would be a huge draw for the kids, and would be a great opportunity to design a new Fall Reading Challenge around books about technology. Maybe if they raised enough money in the sale she could petition the district for a grant for the extra funds....

"Miss Murphy? Where do you want me to put these?"

Helen blinked and looked up at Matt, who was holding yet another box in his arms and craning his neck to try to find an open space to put it. She gestured vaguely at one of the corners of the room.

"Just...over there somewhere. Wherever you can find a flat surface is fine."

Matt dumped the box on top of a pile of several others and dusted his hands off, looking around the crowded office and shaking his shaggy hair back from his face. He was one of the local high school students who always volunteered with the book sales in return for getting first dibs on any donated sci-fi anthologies that came up for sale, and Helen was glad for his help. Her knees had started to ache when she tried to carry heavy loads, and she was desperately trying to ignore the reminder that she was about to turn forty-six. It probably meant that she could stand to drop a few pounds, she thought sourly.

"Thanks, Matt." He nodded eagerly, looking about ready to vibrate out of his skin, and she took pity on him and quirked a smile, nodding at one of the boxes on her desk. "Check in there. I think you'll find something you like."

Matt dove into the box and let out a strangled yelp, emerging with a copy of _Foundation's Edge_.

"Really?" he said in excitement, and Helen couldn't help but grin at his enthusiasm.

"It's still got a cover and everything," she confirmed, shaking the donation jar at him. He dug a bill out of his pocket and dropped it in, fingering the book lovingly. "You've already read it, right?"

"Yeah, of course, but only twice. But I lent my copy to Avery, and I think he lost it." He waggled the book at her and raised his eyebrows. "Did you know it's almost guaranteed for a Hugo next year?"

"I did," she said patiently, leaving out the unspoken _it's my job to know these things, young man._ Seeing a young person so excited about books put a soft glow in her stomach and made the aching knees worth it. And if she personally preferred Clarke to Asimov? Well, she wouldn't spoil Matt's fun. It took all kinds.

"I think that's the last of them," Matt said, looking around at the piles of boxes. "I've got band practice tomorrow, but I can be here Thursday afternoon if you want."

"That will be fine," Helen said. She leaned against her desk and picked up the book she had dropped earlier. The cover was smooth and worn under her fingers, and she idly bent it back to read the title page. The title page was empty – in fact, a quick flip through showed her that the entire book contained nothing but blank pages. It must have been designed as a journal of some kind, she thought absently, finding it curious that the pages themselves were so crisp and perfect while the outside of the volume showed such wear. "I should be mostly done with the organizing by Thursday," she said, refocusing her attention on Matt. "We could use some help setting up the tables for the sale, and then you could bring in the..."

She broke off at the sound of shouts coming from the main room. Rowdy children aside, the library wasn't usually the place to hear such noise, and this was definitely the raised voices of adults. Helen wondered whether Mr. Peterman had made another visit after having a little too much to drink. She hoped not – having to call the cops and write up an incident report would mean that she wouldn't be able to leave for hours yet.

Matt ducked outside to investigate and reappeared thirty seconds later, jutting his thumb toward the door.

"Uh, Miss Murphy? I think they need you out there."

Helen fixed her face in her best Official Librarian Scowl and made her way toward the circulation desk, the red-bound journal still clutched in her hand. Margaret from the reference desk was standing in the broad open vestibule next to two men who were obviously the source of the noise. From their faces they looked to be in their mid-thirties, although the scruffy mix of denim and flannel they wore made them seem almost a decade older. They were both tall and had the rugged look of men who worked with their hands for a living. Their heads were covered by baseball caps, and their expressions were set in matching glowers. Helen dropped the journal on the circulation desk and headed over to the group to find out what the trouble was. She arrived just in time to hear Margaret pleading with the two men to lower their voices.

"Oh, here we are." Margaret looked more than a little relieved to be passing the buck, not that Helen could really blame her. "Mr. Colt, Helen Murphy is our head librarian. I'm sure she'll be able to give you some more information." And then Margaret vanished behind the reference desk. Helen didn't think she'd ever seen her colleague move so quickly.

"Gentlemen, can I help you with something?" She kept her mannerism brisk and professional, all the while wondering if she should have stood closer to a phone in case she needed to call security.

"Yeah, Bob Colt," one of the men said gruffly, reaching out and offering Helen a firm handshake. "Assistant principal at Washington High. This is my colleague, Rufus Smith. He works for the superintendent's office." The other man offered Helen a brief nod. "It appears that one of the books from our school library was accidentally sent to your donation drive. If you'd just take a second to return it to us, we'll be out of your hair in no time."

Helen crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrow. Colt and Smith stared at her with the dispassionate look of those used to giving orders and having them followed, but if these men were employees of the school district then she was a fairy princess. Aside from the fact that she had at least a casual acquaintance with many of the local staff and faculty and didn't recognize either of these men...well, she strongly doubted that administrators made a habit of wandering around during business hours in jeans and several days' worth of beard stubble.

And she doubted even more strongly that someone from the superintendent's office would waste time in tracking down a single missing library book.

"Mr....Colt, was it?" He nodded at her. "You must be a new hire. I'm surprised we've never been introduced."

"Well, I just transferred in from Pierre a couple of weeks ago," he said, digging his hands into his pockets and attempting what Helen suspected was supposed to be a charming smile. "You know how it is – it takes a while for the paperwork to catch up. And it would be really embarrassing for school property to go missing on my watch, especially when I've just gotten started. So if you could just let us have that book back, we'd be mighty grateful."

And Helen thought that she knew exactly what was happening here. Every few years someone would show up in a panic claiming that they had donated a book in error. Usually it was a student who had accidentally dropped one of their textbooks into the donation slot while dropping off other books, but every once in a while it was something a little more interesting – like the man who had claimed to be a long-lost son grandson of Mrs. Garrett and was trying to get possession of the expensive editions she had left the library in her will. That particular adventure had involved a visit from the county lawyer.

But really, most of the time it was obvious a mistake had been made and so Helen had no problem returning any accidentally donated materials. But something about Colt and Smith put her hackles up. Maybe it was the blatant, cold-blooded lying about something so trivial, or maybe it was the fact that two men younger than her clearly expected her to roll over and obey them as if they were higher on the food chain then she was. A lifetime of "just a library lady" condescension stiffened her spine.

And then Smith shifted his weight from one foot to the other. His flannel overshirt gaped open, and Helen caught a glimpse of a loaded holster tucked behind the curve of his hip. Her blood ran cold.

"Well, why don't you tell me about this book?" she asked, taking a subtle step backward in the direction of the circulation desk. She wondered if Margaret was watching, one hand on the phone. She hadn't even begun to sort through the piles of books that had been donated so far, but unusual had caught her eye so far. Maybe it wasn't about retrieving a rare first edition. Maybe something was tucked inside one of the volumes – money? drugs? – that these two men were desperate enough to recover that they'd bring a handgun inside a public library.

"It's about this long," Smith interjected, holding his hands about eight inches apart. "Red cover, pretty old. The title's been worn away. Have you seen something like it?"

_Red cover._ Helen took one more step back, alarmed when the two men stepped forward to shadow her. She knew exactly the book they were looking for, because she had been holding it in her hands just a few minutes earlier. It was the only one in her donation pile with that distinctive look. She had been more than ready to hand the book over to them just to get them out of there – if there was something illegal tucked inside, she'd just as soon get it out of her library first and call the police second. But she'd flipped through that volume herself, and there was nothing hidden inside. There weren't even any _words_ inside, the creamy pages entirely blank and seemingly untouched. Confusion led to a sudden rush of anger, as if these men had decided to play a prank on her.

"Well," she said coolly, "any property of Washington High will have the watermark stamped inside the front cover. We will be more than happy to help you recover any of your _rightful_ property."

If their exchanged glance was anything to go by, the two men didn't miss her emphasis. "Look," Colt said. "Miss Murphy? We're just trying to help you out. That book can be dangerous."

So this _was_ about something illegal. She thought wildly of the spy movies she's seen, the way information could be hidden discreetly. Maybe there was something written on the pages in invisible ink, or perhaps something had been sewn into the cover. Whatever was going on, the safest move was to just give up and book and hope that this was the last she saw of Mr. Colt and Mr. Smith.

Which was why she was so horrified by what actually came out of her mouth.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Colt. I don't believe that knowledge can be dangerous."

Colt opened his mouth to respond, but Smith nudged him.

"Bobby," he said quietly. "There it is."

Helen followed their glances over her shoulder to the red-bound journal still sitting on the circulation desk. Smith and Colt walked right around her, clearly dismissing her. The burst of anger that had her shooting her mouth off hadn't dissipated yet, because she found herself following closely behind them.

"I'm sorry," she said in her most forceful tone. "I simply can't allow you to take that book until I can determine that it's the rightful property of the Sioux Falls school district."

_Shut up,_ she said to herself. _Just let them take the book and get out of here._ But for reasons entirely unknown she found herself feeling fiercely protective toward the little red journal with no title. It felt familiar, somehow, as if it was a well-loved book from her childhood that she had lost many years ago. She couldn't figure out where the feeling had come from – as far as she knew, she'd never even seen the book before this afternoon.

As she stepped forward to place herself between the men and the book – guns be damned – the lights went out.

Helen heard Margaret let out a shriek from somewhere behind her, but the sound was strangely muffled, as if heard underwater. The air around her seemed to thicken, and it took more effort to keep the breath moving in her lungs. Something crackled and sparked at the corner of her eye, but when she turned her head there was nothing there.

"Oh, Jesus," Colt breathed. "It's started. Rufus, you got the incantation?"

"What...?" Helen started, but the two men ignored her.

An arc of lightning lit up the room for a brief second. Helen could see the shelving around her backlit against the strobe effect, the windows inky pools in the walls. The lightning was coming from _inside_ the room, and Helen wondered if there had been a short in the wiring. The thickened air around her pulsed, as if with the beat of a giant heart, and she could feel her own heart beating inside her chest with the same rhythm. Smith pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket that held some kind of dark herb which he sprinkled in a rough circle around the book. Colt was holding a piece of paper with words scribbled across it in a messy script. He started to chant something in Latin while Smith pulled out a lighter and flicked it on, leaning over to ignite the herbs.

_Of course,_ Helen thought hysterically. _Let's get the book high. That will fix everything._ And then she laughed out loud, because she couldn't do anything but. Smith and Colt ignored her.

A sudden breeze blew Helen's hair into her face, and she tucked it behind her ears. The wind caught the cover of the book and blew it open, ruffling the pages inside. But the pages were no longer blank. As they flipped past, Helen could see images appearing on the smooth sheets. They flew past too quickly for her to get a good look, but she was almost certain that the pictures were moving.

Lightning arced overhead again, reaching down from the ceiling to touch the outstretched pages of the book. They didn't ignite, as Helen expected. Instead, the book began to glow, pulsing with the same energy that filled the thickened air around her. She could hear Smith cursing while sprinkling a red powder over the book, the drone of Colt's chanting a rhythmic undertone. The wind grew around her, ripping volumes from the nearby shelves and sending them tumbling across the carpet. She saw a few patrons dive past her for the doorway, and she knew that she should probably follow them. Something held her in place, however, and it wasn't solely fear. This was _her_ library, and she wasn't leaving. She jerked in surprise when Smith grabbed her arm.

"Lady, you need to get out of here," he said, giving her a push toward the door.

"No," she said softly. "Not yet."

The pages of the open book flipped past her eyes lightning fast, bursting with color and movement. Whole worlds opened up before her eyes, brief glimpses before they were torn away by the turning of the page. The colors were more vivid than anything she'd ever seen in the world's most exquisite artwork, the sense of movement more substantial than the greatest of big-screen movies. The wind whipped around her like a gale, and by all rights it should have torn the book from the table and the pages from the book. Colt's voice rose above the tempest in a howl.

_"Claudite! Claudite ostia mundi!"_

And then everything slowed down to a crawl, the roar of the wind silenced until all Helen could hear was the pulse of the book's rhythm like the thump of a giant heart. She could see Colt and Smith out of the corner of her vision, standing frozen as if trapped in amber. It should have frightened her, but she couldn't take her eyes off the book and the utter beauty of the images, world upon world opening up in front of her. That sense of familiarity, of rightness, was stronger than ever.

_Yes,_ she thought. _This is where I belong._

She reached out and touched the book, and the world disappeared.

 

 

 

Sam dropped the last of the boxes on the table and put his hands on his hips, arching backward to try to get the kinks out of his back. He peeled off his sweaty overshirt and tossed it over the back of one of the chairs, letting the blessedly cool air of the vast space wash over him.

He didn't know if it was the natural insulation of the surrounding rocks or some kind of impossibly modern climate control system – or maybe even magic – but the Men of Letters had wound up with just about the perfect atmosphere for their lair. It was cool enough to be comfortable, dry enough to protect the library of books, and fresh enough that there had to be a fairly sophisticated ventilation system built in.

The entire setup was impossible, of course. There was no way that the place should be in as pristine condition as it was after decades of abandonment, but Sam had stopped worrying about the details. Chances were good that there were some heavy-duty enchantments at work keeping the machinery up and running. It used to bother him, the not knowing, and he would sometimes wake in the middle of the night convinced that the generators had chosen that precise moment to fail. He didn't like leaving things up to chance. But eventually he decided that the worrying was pointless. Whatever spell work was involved in maintaining the bunker, there was no reason for it to suddenly stop once the place was actually occupied.

Besides, Dean didn't seem to be worried. Which was both slightly unusual and more than a little endearing – not that he would ever tell his brother that. Dean had settled into the place as if he'd been born to do so, and maybe he had. Maybe this place was in their blood.

Sam still remembered how difficult it had been to rejoin Dean on the road once he left college, all those years ago. Jessica's death had been so horrific that a part of him still ached when he thought of her. But in retrospect, the mourning had been the easy part. There had been a purity to his grief, his thirst for vengeance giving him a purpose and clarity that he'd sorely needed.

The hard part had been getting used to the thousand and one mundane inconveniences of a life constantly on the move. He'd grown used to having his own place at Stanford, something he'd never really had growing up. He could remember how it had taken him months before he got used to putting his clothes away in a drawer instead of stuffing them in a backpack. There was a luxury in being able to stock a refrigerator and not worry that he would have to move on before he got a chance to use everything. He'd tried to explain it all to Jessica once, giving her a vague explanation of his dad being in the Marines and growing up moving from place to place, but he'd known he would never be able to make her understand the utter rootlessness of their family life, or the way something as simple as having a place to drop his keys and knowing they'd be in the same place when he came back for them felt almost hedonistic.

He'd forgotten what it was like to live out of the trunk of a car, structuring the empty days between hunts around finding an open laundromat and the least disgusting fast food option. He'd had to relearn the primary rule of Winchester travel: don't own more than you can carry on your back. And of course, he'd had to deal with the most difficult part of all: being stuck with in the same enclosed space as his brother for days at a time.

In retrospect, it was probably good that he'd had his drive for vengeance and strange new prophetic dreams to distract him. Otherwise, he and Dean might have killed each other after the first few weeks.

"Seriously, that had better be the last one. I'm done moving this crap halfway across the country."

Dean appeared next to Sam and dropped another box on the table, wiping the back of his neck. After their unspoken decision to turn the Men of Letters headquarters into their base camp, Dean had taken it upon himself to unearth and relocate the stashes of books and artifacts that Bobby (and their father) had left hidden across the country. They left a few things in their hiding places – "not a good idea to keep all your eggs in one basket," Dean had said – but between hunts they ended up moving the bulk of the material to the bunker for safekeeping. The current load of books and scrolls represented the last of Bobby's hidden caches – the ones that they knew about, at least.

"Beer?" Dean asked, disappearing down the hallway leading to the kitchen before Sam could respond. He returned in a few minutes with two bottles and tossed one to Sam, collapsing into one of the chairs that lined the table. Sam nodded in thanks and took the seat across from him, leaning across to clink his bottle against Dean's in acknowledgment of a job well done.

"At least we've got plenty of space for all those new books you're going to unpack and catalog," Dean said, eyeing the vast space of the main library.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. "...wait, what? What do you mean, _you're_ going to unpack?"

Dean shrugged. "Come on, Sammy. This is your time to shine! All that wonderfully boring stacking and organizing? You know you live for this stuff."

"It doesn't mean you can't help," Sam shot back.

"Hey! I just drove your ass across three states."

"Only because you wouldn't let me behind the wheel!"

They glared at each other for a moment before Dean cracked a smile. "Whatever. I'll give you a hand after I make dinner. There's no reason it has to be done right this second."

Sam's stomach rumbled at the idea of food, but he couldn't resist getting one last shot in. "Not a problem." He waved his hand magnanimously. "I'll take care of the heavy lifting. You can go and iron your apron."

Dean's eyes narrowed. "Just for that, you're getting cold cereal."

"Aw, Dean, but you look so pretty in it and everything!"

"Hey," Dean said easily, propping his feet up on the table and linking his fingers behind his head. "Someone has to support you in the manner you've become accustomed to, princess."

"Whatever," Sam said, shoving one of the boxes at Dean and making him almost fall off his chair in an attempt to catch it before it hit the ground. Dean cursed and grabbed gracelessly at the box, making Sam cackle.

"Asshole," Dean offered mildly, shifting the box on his lap and taking a look at the pile of scrolls inside. "Probably most of this stuff is worthless anyway," he muttered. "If it was really important, Bobby would have made sure we knew about it somehow."

"Yeah, maybe," Sam said quietly.

"So it was probably a waste of time to drive out there and pick this stuff up when we could have been doing more research about these trials of yours, but...."

"...but all this was Bobby's," Sam finished.

"Yeah."

They sat in silence for a long moment, each lost in his own thoughts. Without another word, Dean took a long swallow of beer and shoved himself to his feet, heading for the kitchen. Sam let him go and turned his attention to the piles of books.

By the time Dean returned forty-five minutes later bearing plates piled high with grilled cheese sandwiches and fries, Sam was immersed in his organization. He wouldn't admit it out loud to Dean – pride forbade it – but he honestly did love the ongoing sorting and cataloging he'd begun since they'd moved into the bunker. The records kept by the Men of Letters were thorough in some places and completely lacking in others, as if they had begun the job but never had the chance to complete it before something happened. Sam had found himself reworking the entire scheme into a system that wouldn't exactly pass inspection at the Library of Congress but that made sense to him.

And would make sense to Dean as well, he hoped, just in case the sinking feeling he had in his gut about the upcoming trials turned out to be correct.

Sam shoved aside a pile of scrolls and accepted his plate from Dean, who settled back across from Sam in what had become his regular seat. Sam took a bite and almost moaned his pleasure out loud. Goddamn, that was a good sandwich – two different kinds of cheese perfectly melted, the outside of the bread browned crisp and salty. He peeled up the bread to confirm what he had just tasted, that Dean had included some tomato and thinly sliced onion in between the layers of cheese. The fries appeared to be from an actual potato, hand-sliced and baked and perfectly crispy. Sam ate one and tasted olive oil and sea salt, with just a touch of garlic. He looked up to see Dean watching him closely, a half-smile of anticipation on his face.

"Dude, this is awesome," Sam said fervently.

His brother shrugged as if it was no big deal, but he couldn't hide the grin that blossomed across his face. Dean still avoided most green vegetables as if they were a direct threat to his masculinity, but over the last month he had otherwise developed into a sort of amazing cook. It still surprised Sam how quickly and easily Dean had put down roots in this place. It made him think about all the might-have-beens, about an alternate reality of Dean with his own house and family, watching Food Network on the sly and making hand-cut fries for his own kids while Uncle Sam hovered approvingly (and vaguely) in the background.

"Well, you're cleaning up," Dean said, and Sam nodded because, fair enough.

It was funny how he could picture this other version of Dean so clearly but couldn't really visualize himself in the same way. He felt as if he'd deliberately kept open a door that Dean had closed long ago, a door that led to another life of home and children and family. And yet, even though that door still remained open, the more time passed the more impossible it seemed that he would actually walk through it. Maybe it was the failed attempt at normalcy with Amelia, or maybe it was the looming specter of the upcoming trials, but these days it was easier to picture Dean settling into a kind of domesticity that he himself would never have.

He took another bite to distract him from his maudlin thoughts, flinching when a cloth napkin hit him in the face.

"Don't get your greasy fingers all over the library," Dean scolded. Sam opened his mouth to bitch at his brother because, _really?_ And also, cloth napkins? But he just shook his head and accepted the napkin obediently, wincing when Dean craned his neck back and let out a room-rattling burp. Apparently his brother's attempts at domesticity and fine dining only went so far.

"So what have we got here?" Dean asked, wiping his fingers on his own napkin. "Anything useful?"

_For the trials_ was the unspoken conclusion to that sentence, and they both knew it.

"Nothing so far," Sam admitted. "I can't read half of the scrolls, so I have no idea what to do with them yet. I'm hoping that Bobby left a list somewhere in this pile that tells us what everything is."

"Nah, that'd be too easy."

"Yeah, probably." Sam pointed at a couple of stacks of books he had made. "That pile on the left looks like general history stuff – nothing new that I could tell, but obviously I didn't get a chance to do more than flip through them. The one in the middle has spells and rituals. I don't know, probably half of them need to be translated."

Dean perked up at that and pulled the pile closer to his side of the table. "Sounds promising," he said hopefully, but they both knew it was a long shot that they'd miraculously find a volume that had any new information about prophets and trials and demon tablets. "What's the third pile?"

Sam shrugged and shoved the rest of his sandwich in his mouth. "Miscellaneous – weapons manuals, blank journals, stuff like that. And there are still a couple of boxes I didn't get a chance to go through yet."

"Fantastic," Dean snarked. "Exactly how I planned to spend my evening."

"Seriously dude, I can handle it," Sam said. "Why don't you take it easy, watch some TV or something?"

Dean shrugged casually, but as usual his poker face was for shit. "Nah, I don't mind giving you a hand," he said lightly. "I don't think there's anything good on tonight anyway."

For someone who had been a professional liar all his life as a matter of basic necessity, Dean absolutely sucked at lying to his own family. Sam knew that Dean was hovering in an attempt to check up on his health. Which, side effects from the first trial aside, was actually pretty good. And the side effects were manageable so far, although the rattling cough that nagged at him seemed to leave him a little weaker each day, even when he wasn't coughing up actual blood. He thought he'd managed to hide the worst of it from Dean – no need to worry him when they both had so much on their plates – but Dean was a sneaky fucker when he thought that Sam was keeping something from him.

And so, as usual, they both danced around the fact that they knew exactly what the other was saying even when they weren't saying it, and pretended that everything was just fine. It was the Winchester Way.

"Fine," Sam said, pushing one of the unopened boxes over to Dean. "You take this one."

They settled in to examine the books and set aside the artifacts for later study. Sam didn't have the faintest idea what Bobby had been doing with a wrapped bundle of what looked like old chicken bones, but he left them for later and focused on the literature. Dean flipped through his own set of books and distributed them into the piles Sam had started.

"Sammy," he said at one point, holding one of the books open to a pornographic woodcut image of a woman being violated by three...somethings. Sam didn't want to look too closely. "Fertility rituals," Dean said, waggling his eyebrows.

Sam rolled his eyes and gifted Dean with a look of disgust, which he knew was exactly what Dean had been going for. His brother smirked and settled back in his chair, flipping through the book shamelessly and offering the occasional commentary while his remaining stack lay forgotten around him. He'd managed a solid hour of work, which was more than Sam had been counting on, so he shrugged and left Dean to his own devices.

By the time Sam got to the bottom of his box his back was aching again from spending so long bent over the table. Dean was nursing another beer and had zoned out at some point, eyes at half-mast. Sam was about to call it a night for both of them when his eye was caught by the last book in his box.

The red cover was cracked and soft with age, the letters of the title mostly worn away. There was some kind of symbol stamped on the cover. Sam ran his fingers over it and squinted to try to make out what it was, but it wasn't anything he could recognize so he made a mental note to research it tomorrow. Sam opened the book and flipped through the pages. Blank. He shrugged and dropped it on the table, set aside from the other piles. It was a nice enough volume, and he had been thinking about getting a new journal anyway. When he pushed his chair away from the table, Dean blinked himself awake at the noise and frowned at Sam.

"You okay?"

"Fine."

Call and response given and received, same as always.

"Done already?" Dean asked with a yawn, stretching his arms over his head. "It's only...whoa. After midnight."

"Yeah, I lost track of time," Sam admitted. "I'll get the rest of it tomorrow."

"Sounds like a plan," Dean said. "I was thinking of driving out to see Kevin tomorrow anyway, check up on what he's been up to. Swear to God, I spend more time these days driving back and forth between two nerds bent over their desks."

"Whatever," was all the response that particular comment deserved. Sam took a last look at the dinner dishes still sitting out on the table and checked to see if Dean had noticed they were still there. He hadn't, which as far as Sam was concerned was explicit permission to ignore them until tomorrow.

The area of the bunker that housed the sleeping quarters was underground, below the library and above the basement level that housed a weight room and shooting range. (Whatever combination of magic and engineering had gone into building the place hadn't skimped on the soundproofing, for which Sam was entirely grateful.) The Men of Letters had seen fit to build a small dormitory with half a dozen bunk beds – for what purpose neither of them could figure out – as well as half a dozen smaller individual rooms. Dean had gleefully called first dibs, which Sam didn't bother to raise a stink about given that all of the rooms appeared to be identical.

Having his own room again was…strange. He'd thought it would be heaven after years of living in crappy motels, always a single room with two queens because anything else was an unnecessary expense. The idea of having a space all his own, with a door he could shut and lock, should have been wonderful. And it was, mostly. Except for the times he woke up in the middle of the night and could only hear his own breathing, and then it took him a few minutes to figure out that he wasn't holed up in the middle of Texas convinced that Dean was dead. More than once Sam had slipped out of bed and padded across to Dean's room, just to stand outside the door and listen for a moment to reassure himself that his brother was really there. Dean had never caught him at it, for which Sam was profoundly grateful.

There were several communal bathrooms on the sleeping level, a large one with several showers near to the dormitory, and an individual one closer to their end of the hall. Dean ducked into the bathroom first while Sam poked through his pile of dirty clothes and tried to decide if he had anything clean to wear tomorrow. It looked like laundry was definitely on the agenda.

And then, all of the hair on Sam's arms stood on end.

There was a tingling buzz in the air around him, a faint ozone crackling that reminded him of being caught outside as a thunderstorm rumbled its way into existence. He could almost see electric sparks dancing around him, and the air felt thick and soupy. There was a sudden crackle followed by a large ripping sound coming from the main levels of the bunker, as if something had torn a large hole through the world's biggest piece of cloth.

Dean slammed open the door of the bathroom and stared at Sam with wide eyes, his toothbrush still planted in his mouth and dripping onto the floor. They only needed to make eye contact for a split second before Dean ripped the toothbrush from his mouth and tore off down the hall, Sam following closely behind.

The library should have been dark, as they had left it. Instead, branches of lightning arced out of the air onto the table where they had been working earlier. The tendrils of electricity danced over the piles of books and artifacts before lighting on the red journal that Sam had set aside earlier.

"What the hell?" Dean growled, his gun out and in his hands. Sam hadn't even known that he'd been carrying it.

"I don't know!" Sam said. "Can you see what's causing it?"

Dean's eyes tracked across the room from floor to ceiling, and he shook his head. "I can't see a damn thing. And I'm sure as hell not getting any closer to find out."

"I hear you," Sam said fervently. He flinched back as air crackled, spitting sparks out that landed harmlessly on the floor. A sudden wind blew his hair back from his face, and the thickened air was hard to breathe. He could almost hear a vibration that seemed to echo throughout the room, like the beat of a giant heart. He could feel his own frantically thumping in his chest out of rhythm with the pulse of the air around him.

Suddenly the light flared so brightly that Sam had to throw his arms up in front of his face. He dimly heard Dean cursing next to him over the roar of the wind. Torn pages whirled through the air around them like dead leaves. He grabbed hold of Dean's sleeve, about to suggest that they both get out of there while they could.

And then, as quickly as it had begun, it was all over.

The overhead lights flickered on, and he could easily breathe the air again. Bits of paper fluttered harmlessly to the ground. Sam's harsh breathing sounded unnaturally loud in his own ears in the sudden silence that filled the room.

"...the hell?" Dean said again, much more subdued, looking at Sam in concern. "You okay, Sammy?"

A whimper caught their attention. Dean swung around and brought his gun to bear on the figure of a woman who stood next to the table, one hand on the red book. She turned around slowly and gasped in surprise, eyes wide and pupils dilated. Shakily, she raised her arms.

"Please," she said, voice high-pitched in terror. "Don't shoot."

"What are you?" Dean growled. "How did you get in here?"

She blinked at them, then cast a terrified glance around the room. "I don't...this isn't my library. What did they do to me?"

Her hands were shaking, and Sam was afraid that she was about to collapse. "Dean," he murmured, and his brother lowered the gun. Sam took a cautious step toward her.

"Who are you talking about?" he asked, holding his own hands up in an attempt to reassure her. "Did someone do something to you? It's okay," he said quickly when she took a step backward, stumbling against the end of the table. "No one here is going to hurt you."

She cast a quick, disbelieving look over Sam's shoulder. Sam followed her glance to see that Dean must have tucked the gun into his waistband out of sight. He too was holding his hands open and empty, spread wide.

"Hey," Dean said gruffly. "He's right. You're okay. Can you tell us what happened?"

The woman leaned back against the table and slowly lowered her hands. Sam took a moment to study her as her eyes skipped over the room. She was middle-aged, on the short side, with a few silver threads in her dark hair, dressed formally in a dated pantsuit. There was nothing about her appearance that screamed monster here, although Sam knew that looks could be entirely deceiving. Still, he could have passed her on the street and taken her for a soccer mom on the way to pick up her kids.

"Can you tell me where I am?" she countered, her voice still shaking but firmer than it had been a few minutes ago.

Sam exchanged a glance with Dean, wondering how much information they should provide for her. Dean gave a small shrug, indicating that he would follow Sam's lead. "You're outside of Lebanon, Kansas," he said. "We live here. I'm Sam Winchester, and this is my brother Dean."

Her eyes widened again. "Kansas?" she muttered. "No, but I was just in..." Her head spun around in search of something. "Are they here too? The men?"

"What men?" Dean asked, and Sam was happy to hear that his brother had modulated his tone to a more acceptable level. Dean sometimes had a habit of losing track of the social niceties when he was trying to get information from someone, defaulting to either Flirt or Threaten. Sam didn't think this woman would respond well to either.

"There were two of them," the woman said. Her eyes rested on the table, drawn to the red book laying there. It looked so innocuous now, as if the violence of the sudden electrical storm hadn't even touched it. "They were doing something to the book, and that's when everything began to change."

She straightened up and took a deep breath. "They came into my branch earlier today looking for a book. I'm the head librarian, and we're located right outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota." Her voice caught on the last sentence, as if she was having trouble believing her own words. Sam exchanged a glance with Dean. "They told me their names were Bob Colt and Rufus Smith. They said they worked for the school district, but I knew they were lying to me. They did something, with some herbs and chanting, and then I was here." She folded her arms across her chest and blinked at them, seemingly overwhelmed and on the verge of tears. "I don't know how I ended up here, but could you help me get home again?"

"Hey," Dean said softly, approaching her gingerly and pulling out a chair for her to sit on. "It's okay. We'll figure out what's going on. What's your name?"

She sniffed and wiped a single finger below her eyes, clearly trying to pull herself together. "Helen. Helen Louise Murphy."

Something clicked in Sam's mind, a connection sparking to life that seemed completely, implausibly ridiculous. He almost couldn't believe he'd even come up with the idea. But there was something that he couldn't put his finger on that kept him from dismissing it out of hand. Maybe it was something as simple as Helen's old-fashioned pantsuit and hairstyle.

"Helen?" he asked, waiting until she looked up at him. "Could you tell me what the date is?"

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Dean look up at him with a curious frown, but he kept his attention focused on Helen. She looked as confused by his question as Dean did.

"It's Tuesday," she said. "Tuesday, October 19, 1982."


	2. Chapter Two

 

 

 

Dean leaned against the kitchen counter and stared at the drip of the coffeemaker, his arms folded across his chest and a slight frown fixed on his face. Sam grabbed one of the chairs from the little table tucked against the wall and spun it around to straddle it backward. Helen was in the restroom down the hall where Sam had escorted her after offering to make some coffee. It was almost two in the morning, but Sam knew that neither he nor Dean would be getting much sleep that night.

"So, what do you think?" he asked Dean quietly.

Dean shook his head, eyes still fixed on the coffeemaker. "Man, I don't even know. I mean, we know time travel's a thing. But I don't have the first clue who or what brought her here."

"She came from Sioux Falls," Sam said. "And she mentioned two guys named Bob and Rufus performing a ritual with that red book. I know it's a hell of a coincidence, but...."

Dean huffed out a laugh. "Stranger shit has happened. Do you think it could have been...Bobby?" His voice caught on the name, and he coughed gruffly to cover it up. Sam just shrugged, pretending not to notice.

"The dates could work," he said, thinking out loud. "I think that was around the time his wife died, right? And he started hunting after that. I don't know exactly when he met up with Rufus, but I know the two of them were working together for a few years."

"Yeah, but Bobby never would have kidnapped a civilian and sent her into the future," Dean growled. "Are you seriously suggesting that?"

"No, I don't think so," Sam said slowly. "Maybe they didn't mean to do this at all. Maybe they were trying to...I don't know, prevent something like whatever just happened with that book back there, and she was just collateral damage."

"Well, we're going to have to dig out his journals," Dean said, reaching out and grabbing a mug. "If he was involved with this, he must have left a record."

 

 

**********

 

Helen cupped her palms under the water and watched it pool in her hands and run over her fingers. Her hands were still shaking, her breathing fast and reedy, and she let the water swirl over her hands until it had slowed to a more regular rhythm. She brought her cupped hands up to her face and tried to let the coolness of the water clear her mind.

The world was still the same when she lowered her hands and looked in the mirror. She was still in a bathroom in Kansas, with no idea how she had gotten there. Water dripped off the point of her chin, and she numbly grabbed a hand towel and patted her face dry. Her eyes were dark and featureless, empty like the broken windows of an abandoned house, and she shuddered and turned away from the mirror.

She knew she needed to go out there and face what was going on. She wasn't going to get home by hiding in a bathroom. But her nerves were so raw that she wasn't sure she could face strangers questioning her about an event she had no context for and could scarcely believe had happened in the first place. A frantic corner of her brain wondered if this was all _their_ fault, these two brothers from Kansas, but she seemed to remember them looking as shocked to see her as she was to see them. If they'd wanted to kill her, they could have done it right away. She still didn't entirely trust them, but she supposed she couldn't blame them by being rattled by someone appearing out of nowhere in the middle of their home.

Although that didn't explain why one of them apparently carried a gun inside his own house, as if he was waiting for someone to attack him.

 _Stop it, Helen,_ she told herself fiercely. Whether these two were psychopaths or not, she had no choice but to trust them for the moment. Taking a deep breath and straightening her shoulders, she unlocked the bathroom door and followed the smell of brewing coffee down the hall.

The taller brother with shaggy hair was sitting hunched over one of the chairs, and he jumped up when she came in.

"Hi," he said, shoving his hands in his pockets in a way that would almost be endearing except for his sheer size and the latent fear that still ran in her blood like acid. "Helen, right? You want some coffee?"

She nodded and took a seat at the small kitchen table, looking around the room while he poured her a cup. It was a clean space, with dark wood cabinets and old-fashioned wallpaper, along with a curious mix of appliances, some of which looked decades old and others of which she couldn't begin to guess the purpose of. The stove, although it looked to be in impeccable condition, wouldn't have been out of place in her childhood home. A clock hung on the wall – she was shocked to see that it was apparently the middle of the night – along with a single generic landscape print, but there were no other pictures or decorations. It seemed too large a space for two men to inhabit all by themselves, but she would bet that no women lived here either.

The tall man – _Sam,_ she thought he'd called himself – put a mug on the table in front of her, along with a plastic bottle of milk and a small box that contained paper packets of sugar. He settled across from her with his own mug, blowing on it before taking a sip. When she fixed her own mug, she was pleased to see that her hands had stopped shaking.

She was just taking her first sip when the other brother returned, carrying the journal and a few other items with him. He dropped the book on the table in front of her, and she did her best not to shudder. It looked the same as it always had, except that the faint marking she had seen stamped on the cover was entirely obliterated by what looked like a burn mark. Sam must have seen the same thing, because he frowned and pointed at it.

"Dean, did you see what happened here?"

Dean looked at the mark and shook his head. "I never really got a good look at it before all this started," he admitted. "Why? What did it look like before?"

"There was a mark of some kind," Sam said. "I didn't really get a good look at it, but I remember that I didn't recognize it. The scorch mark has pretty much obliterated it now."

"It'd probably be a good idea if you made a sketch," Dean said. Sam nodded and grabbed something out of the pile Dean had brought in with him. It looked like a tall, thin book with metal covers, hinged together where the spine should be. He unfolded it and placed it in front of him on the table, and Helen could see that the flat surface in front of him was imprinted with a keyboard. She stared at it in fascination.

"So, Helen," Dean said, drawing her attention back to him. He looked tired, but much more approachable now that he wasn't holding a gun in her face. He also seemed strangely calm. Both of them did, now that the initial shock was over. She wondered if they were military. There had been talk for years of the secret experiments that had begun once the space race was over, and the way these two men had immediately started researching the problem instead of calling the cops like a normal person made her think that they knew more than they were letting on.

Dean pushed the container of milk away and laid a couple of photographs out on the table in front of her. "Can you tell me if the man you saw in the library is in one of those pictures?

Helen looked at the pictures with a frown. One was a group photograph, including Sam and Dean and an older man in a wheelchair, staring at the camera with a frown on his face. The same man was in another of the photographs, standing this time, with an identical irritated expression, as if annoyed that someone was taking his picture. She looked up at Dean and shook her head.

"They were younger," she said. "About your age, I think."

Dean exchanged a glance with Sam that she couldn't interpret and nodded. "Okay," he said gently. "What about this one?"

He unsnapped a battered leather journal he'd been carrying and rifled through it. The pages were crammed with notes made in a tiny script, overlaid with intricate sketches of what looked like runes and arcane symbols. Cutouts of newspaper articles were layered in between some of the pages, along with small photos and bits of paper that looked to be on the verge of falling apart. It looked like the journal of an absentminded professor. _Or a serial killer,_ she thought with a shudder.

Dean had apparently found what he was looking for, because he gently pulled one of the photographs free and laid it in front of her. He handled it delicately, as if it was precious to him, and she looked up to catch a fleeting glimpse of sorrow in his eyes. She swallowed and looked at the picture obediently.

Two men stood in front of a battered house, guns slung over their shoulders and fierce expressions on their faces. Two young boys stood in front of the men. The older looked to be seven or eight, and he was looking up with a grin at one of the men while keeping an arm around the younger boy. She wondered if it was a family portrait – a father and his sons, maybe with an uncle – and then with a sudden shock of insight she took a closer look and realized why Dean had treated the picture with such reverence.

"The two of you?" she asked, pointing at the two young boys. Sam looked surprised at the question but nodded.

"And our father," Dean said in a low voice. "I'm hoping you can identify the other man."

She'd been so focused on the two children that she hadn't yet taken a good look at the faces of the adults. When she did, her breath caught in her throat. She didn't recognize the taller man with the dark hair, the one the older boy was looking at, but the other face....

"That's him," she said, her voice shaking. Bob Colt looked a bit older than when she'd last seen him just an hour or so ago, but she could recognize him even with the beard covering the lower half of his face. Now that she knew what to look for, she looked back at the other photographs.

"I don't understand," she said, staring at the figure in the wheelchair glowering out at the camera. "This is Bob Colt. That's the man who did this to me. How did he...it looks like decades have passed between these pictures!"

And suddenly it all made sense, and she could feel her heart race as acid churn in her gut. She wondered why she hadn't thought of it before. After all, she'd already been transported from one place to another instantaneously. Was it any more of a stretch to make the next logical leap?

"This isn't 1982, is it?"

The words fell heavy from her lips, and she wanted to take them back as soon as they left her mouth. It was impossible, absurd, and she didn't know why she'd even thought something so stupid. But it was the only thing that made sense. The fact that neither Dean nor Sam seemed shocked by the question gave her the answer she needed before they said a word, and she closed her eyes when Sam cleared his throat.

"No," he said gently. "It's...well, a little over thirty years later."

"Oh," she said faintly. She wished she could think of something more impressive to say – _greetings, men of the future, from your past!_ – but instead she just nodded her head inanely as if someone had just told her that she'd forgotten about Daylight Savings time and it was actually 3 am instead of 2 am.

"Look," Dean said. "We're going to figure this out, okay? That's what we do." His voice was gruff, but he spoke kindly.

She opened her eyes and looked back and forth between their eyes, these two brothers, trying to gauge their sincerity. They both returned her gaze calmly and openly. Her gut said that she could trust them, but she had no idea how good of a judge her gut was under these circumstances.

"Did you do this?" she asked, hoping to shock them into a confession.

"No," Sam said firmly. "And neither did he." He tapped his finger on the photograph of Bob Colt. "His name is Bobby Singer. He's...he _was_ like a father to us." So Bobby Singer – the younger man she had spoken with just a few hours before – was dead. She wondered how long ago it had happened. "Look, whatever he and Rufus were doing with the book, I'm sure he didn't mean for you to be caught in the crossfire."

 _You need to get out of here,_ Rufus had said as he pushed her toward the door. But she hadn't gotten out after all.

"Okay," Dean said, scrubbing his hands over his face and glancing tiredly at the clock. "Sam and I are going to need some time to look into this." He pushed a pad of paper and a pen across the table to her. "Here. Why don't you write down your basic information – name, address, social security number, whatever you have. That will give us something to get started with. In the meantime, why don't you get some rest? We've got plenty of room."

She must have looked as skeptical as she felt, because he held his hands up in defense. "I promise. Nothing will happen to you here. We're not holding you against your will. You want to leave? I can show you the door. But it's a different world out there than you're used to. I think you might be safer here until we can figure out what's going on."

The bedroom they showed her to was spartan but clean, and she was happy to see that the door had a lock. Sam was showing her the bathroom when Dean reappeared with a pile of clothes that turned out to be a t-shirt, a pair of sweatpants and some socks – all much too big for her.

"We can get you some real stuff tomorrow," he said. "In the meantime, I figured that would be more comfortable."

It was bizarre, saying a friendly goodnight to two young men who might not have even been born when she'd woken up that morning. As exhausted as she was, she had no idea how in the world she would manage to fall asleep with the way her mind was racing. She did her best to set it all aside, knowing that there were no answers to be had right now. But she knew she definitely wouldn't be able to rest until something had been cleared up. As Sam started to leave, she stopped him with a hand on his arm.

"You said that it's a different world out there," she said, trying to find the best way to word her question. _This is the future,_ she thought, but the more she repeated the phrase the more meaningless it sounded, a jumble of syllables without form or context. Her mind jumped wildly between imagined promises of personal spacecraft and horrors from the newscast she had watched the night before. At the very least, it would reassure to know whether she was stuck in a nightmare or a utopia. "Does that mean...is this a fallout shelter?"

Sam stared at her blankly for a second before his mouth widened into a laugh, dimples cutting notches in his cheeks. It could have been mocking, but the sound was entirely friendly.

"I guess this place looks like it could be one, doesn't it?" he said, slapping the solid stone wall. "But no. No nuclear armageddon outside, either."

And with that, he was gone. Helen closed the door and locked it securely before changing into the too-big t-shirt. Exhaustion overcame the turmoil in her mind, and she was asleep within a minute of her head hitting the pillow.

 

 

**********

 

Sam cradled the coffee between his hands and leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes. Sunrise had come and gone a few hours ago, and the early sun still lay hidden, the building at his back casting a long shadow in front of him. Birds sang from the nearby trees, and he took a moment to enjoy the quiet. The lair of the Men of Letters was deliberately isolated, enough so that the nearest road was completely deserted and there was no noise of traffic to disturb the morning. Sam had never lived somewhere so peaceful.

Before they had crashed for a few hours of sleep, Sam had jumped on the internet, trying to dig up information about Helen and her history. Dean, in the meantime, had focused his search on Bobby's old journals, trying to find out what he and Rufus had been doing in Sioux Falls in October of 1982.

The results in either case were more than a little disturbing.

Sam took a deep breath of the clean morning air and ended up triggering a coughing fit that had him bent over wheezing for a few minutes before he could catch his breath. He spat into the nearby grass and wiped his lips, trying to ignore the pink smear on the back of his hand. When he looked up, he found Dean watching him, a pinched expression on his face. Sam hadn't even heard the front door open.

He waited for Dean to start yelling, but his brother just stared at him for a moment with that closed-off expression before nodding at the door.

"Helen's up, so I figured we should let her know what's going on. I made some eggs."

And then he disappeared, leaving Sam to collect his cup and follow him inside slowly, feeling oddly guilty.

Helen sat perched at one of the library tables, freshly showered and dressed in Dean's pair of sweats. The bottoms were rolled up at the ankles, and that combined with her wet hair made her look strikingly vulnerable. She nodded a good morning to Sam when he came in and sat across from her.

"Sleep well?" he asked.

"As well as could be expected," she said with a shrug and a small smile, and Sam was reminded that she was alone in a time she didn't belong to.

"Soup's on," Dean said, walking in with a dish in each hand. He set one in front of each of them and returned to the kitchen for his own. Sam inhaled the smell of scrambled eggs with cheese and perfectly crisp bacon. It was official – there was no way they were ever giving up the bunker as a home base, not when Dean had this amazing undiscovered talent in the kitchen. The thought of going back to diners and convenience stores was enough to make his soul weep.

Dean rejoined them and they ate in silence for a few moments. At least, Dean and Sam ate. Helen politely did her best, but Sam could see her nervousness growing with each passing moment. After a final bite, Sam pushed his plate aside and cleared his throat.

"We did some research last night," he said. He nodded at Dean, who took a sip of coffee and laid the red-bound journal on the table.

"Bobby kept a journal – most hunters do," Dean said.

"I'm sorry," Helen interrupted. "What does this have to do with hunting?"

The tangent lasted for at least half an hour, during which they gave her an overview of ghosts and goblins and demons and all things that went bump in the night. By unspoken agreement, Sam and Dean left out anything to do with the trials and the demon tablet – not out of a desire to deceive her, but because Sam could still taste the blood in his throat and because Dean kept giving him pointed looks, and it was all a little too close to the bone at the moment. Even keeping to the everyday monsters, it was an almost unbelievable tale. By the time they'd finished, it was clear that Helen was still skeptical.

"But on the other hand, I don't really have a way to explain what happened to me otherwise," she said, forehead creased in a frown.

"Well, it looks like Bobby and Rufus were trying to track this down," Dean said, tapping the red journal. It sat in the middle of the table, inert and unresponsive, and if Helen hadn't been sitting right in front of him then Sam would have been tempted to think that the whole thing was nothing more than a bad dream.

"What is it?" she asked.

"We're still not quite sure," Sam interjected. "Bobby's notes refer to a door – or maybe a key that unlocks a door, I'm not quite sure. The translation was a little fuzzy. I drew a sketch of that design that was stamped on the front before it was burned, but I'm still trying to figure out what it means."

"Can I see the sketch?" Helen asked. Sam passed it across to her, along with a pen, and she stared at the symbol for a long moment before sketching something below it.

"I didn't really get a good look at it myself," she said, "but I think it was something more like that."

She pushed the paper back across the table to Sam, and he studied her drawing. It was similar to his, but the position of some of the intersecting lines had shifted. He nodded in thanks, making a note to go back to the book of runes and see if her drawing was a better match for anything he had already uncovered.

"Bobby's journal mentions finding the book in a library," Dean said. He opened the old leather-bound volume and found the right page, reading aloud.

 

 

> _October 19. Found the book, right in my own backyard. Some idiot had thrown it away. Tracked it down to the local library branch, where it had been donated. We were almost too late, as it had just become active. R. and I performed the Ceremony of Closing just in time. No fatalities, book secured._

 

Dean cleared his throat and closed the journal.

"That's it?" Helen said after a long pause. "No _fatalities?_ What, he just took his precious book with him and didn't bother to check what had happened to the librarian he'd just been talking to?"

Sam winced, because this was the hard part.

"We thought that was strange too," he hurried to say. "Bobby definitely would have mentioned if a civilian had disappeared during the ritual. That's the sort of thing we notice, you know? We wondered why there was no mention of you, or why there was nothing in his journal about the book being linked to any kind of time travel. So I did a little research of my own."

He spun his laptop around so the screen was facing her, and he didn't miss the way her eyes widened.

"This is a computer?" she breathed, reaching out to ghost her fingers across the screen. "That's…it's like something out of _Star Trek_."

And it was pretty neat, seeing his battered old laptop with new eyes. "Yeah," he said with a little grin. "Pretty cool, huh?"

Dean rolled his eyes. "Okay, you two nerds can geek out later," he said.

"A word of advice?" Sam said confidentially to Helen. "Never let him near your computer. You'll regret it."

"Oh, screw you," Dean said without heat. "Get on with it already."

"So, I did a little checking on you," Sam continued. "I tried to find out some basic information, just to confirm what you gave us last night." He wasn't quite sure how much basic information he needed to provide at this point – he hadn't even been born the last time this woman had seen a computer from her own time – so he did his best to formulate a basic explanation. "See, there's this thing called a World Wide Web, and..."

"...and you can use the computer to access any information you need," Dean interrupted. "Come on, Sammy. Skip the technology lecture."

"Sorry," Sam said. "I accessed the birth records from the county you gave us, and I looked up your social security number. I even did a search on your sister Betty."

Sam reached across and maximized the browser window, pulling up a picture of a smiling woman holding an infant in her arms. The baby was laughing and reaching toward the camera. Sam hoped he had a reason to see Helen smile at some point, just to see if it ran in the family.

"That's a recent picture, uploaded just a couple of weeks ago," he said softly. "That's your niece Jen, and her daughter Catelyn."

Helen gasped, and her eyes filled with tears. "Little Jenny?" she said, reaching forward to trace her fingers across the smiling face. "I can't believe it. I saw her a week ago, and she was just starting to walk. Look at how beautiful she is, and with a little baby of her own." She gave Sam a tremulous smile. "She looks so much like Betty. Oh my God, Betty. She probably thinks I'm dead, doesn't she?"

Sam took a deep breath. "Well, the thing is, we found your family, and we found your workplace. It's just that...we didn't find _you_."

Helen looked up from the picture of Jen and frowned. "What do you mean?"

Sam exchanged a helpless glance with Dean. "I've searched everything I can think of," he said. "There was no Helen Louise Murphy born on November 8, 1936 in the state of New Jersey. Your social security number was assigned to a Gerald Lewis from Cleveland. There is no record of your service as a librarian in Sioux Falls, and...as far as I can tell, Betty was an only child."

The silence that followed was one of the most uncomfortable of Sam's life. He could see Dean squirming uncomfortably in the chair next to him, clearly wanting nothing more than to bolt from the room. Helen looked up at him eyes that screamed of betrayal. He wanted nothing more than to tell her that it was all a mistake, that she had a family out there who missed her and loved her and wanted her home. But any reassurances would be hollow, and a ball of helpless anger caused his throat to close up. He had known for a very long time that the world wasn't a fair place, that more often than not it was the innocent who ended up getting hurt, but seeing that hurt up close and personal had never gotten any easier.

"So what you're saying is that I'm not dead," Helen said, her voice sounding as if it had been dragged out of a throat lined with broken glass. "It's that I've never been alive at all."

Helen shoved herself to her feet so quickly that her chair toppled backward. She grabbed up the red journal and threw it across the room. Sam flinched as it sailed past his face.

"You took my life!" she cried, then ran from the room. Dean swore and ran after her, with Sam on his heels.

"Helen," Dean started when they caught up to her as she was yanking the front door open. Sam laid a hand on his arm.

"Maybe we should give her some time to calm down," he murmured. Dean looked over and gave him a short nod, then turned back in horror as Helen began to scream.

She was standing on the threshold of the door, one foot inside and one out. To Sam's shock, he realized that he could suddenly see through her. Her body had the translucent look of a ghost, the arm that was outside the door almost completely faded. Helen looked down at her own body in shock then up at Sam and Dean, her eyes wide and terrified. Dean leaped forward and grabbed her by the arm that was still inside the building and yanked her all the way inside, slamming the door shut behind her. Once she was completely inside, her body returned to its full solidity. Clutching the wrist that Dean had grabbed, she broke into sobs.

"What am I?" she asked. "What's happening to me?"

 

 

**********

 

Helen woke in darkness and panicked, swinging her arm out until it collided with a lamp. She switched it on and found herself lying on her borrowed bed in an underground room that belonged to a pair of brothers who chased monsters for a living.

 _My life can't get any stranger,_ she thought, then remembered that she apparently didn't really _have_ a life.

She could feel herself hyperventilating again and forced her breathing to slow, sitting up and rubbing her own arms to stop the shakes. After her failed attempt to escape outside – just for a few minutes, just so she could catch her breath – she'd retreated to her room so she could continue her breakdown in peace without the Winchester brothers gawking at her and giving her pitying looks when they thought she wasn't looking. Lord knew they probably already thought her too weak to handle the shock of everything that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours. She was almost too embarrassed to go out there and face them after the way she had broken down, but it would be more cowardly still to barricade herself in a borrowed room.

Stepping out of the door, she almost collided with Dean, who was holding a plastic bag in his arms. He stepped back apologetically.

"Sorry about that. I had just wanted to...well, here."

He shoved the bag at her, and she took it and peered inside. A brand new pair of jeans was folded at the bottom of the bag, along with a couple of cotton t-shirts and some basic toiletries – toothbrush, hair brush, shampoo. She wanted to die of embarrassment when she caught sight of a three-pack of cotton underwear tucked along the side.

"There's a Target in Lebanon," Dean said, rubbing the back of his neck uncomfortably. "I had to make a run there this afternoon. I thought you might be more comfortable in stuff that fit you, so I picked up a few things.

She valiantly ignored the underwear and pulled out the jeans, nodding in surprise when she checked the label.

"How did you know my size?"

"Oh, I've got lots of experience sizing up pretty women," he said, waggling his eyebrows lewdly. Helen's mouth dropped open. She was torn between giving him a piece of her mind and bursting out laughing, and she suddenly realized that that was exactly the reaction he'd been hoping for.

"Thank you," she said, meaning it, and he gave her a nod and a genuine smile.

"Sam and I are upstairs, if you want to join us," he said, then retreated to the stairs at the end of the hall.

The new clothes did fit well, even if the jeans sat much lower on her hips than she was used to. If this was the fashionable way to wear them in this time period, then she had no idea how women sat comfortably in them. She splashed cold water on her face and gave her hair a quick fix, figuring she looked about as human as possible under the circumstances. Yanking her t-shirt farther down to cover the waistband of the jeans, she made her way upstairs.

Sam and Dean were sitting at one of the tables in the library, talking together in quiet voices. Books were spread out around him, and Sam was typing on his impossibly thin computer that could apparently pull any information in the world from the ether. She hoped that he would have a chance to show her how to use it. Her natural hunger for knowledge had reawakened, and she suddenly realized that she had over thirty years of history to make up.

Sam looked up and smiled when she approached.

"I'm sorry about earlier," she said stiffly to both of them once she was standing next to the table. "I'm not usually...I shouldn't have...."

"Hey," Sam interrupted. "Don't worry about it. Nothing that's happened to you so far has been usual. You've handled it better than a lot of people I see."

She shrugged, uncomfortable with the comment and suspecting that they were just humoring her. "What are you working on?" she asked, trying to change the subject.

"We're trying to dig up some more information about what that book actually is and what it did to you," Dean said. The red journal was back on the table, and she was suddenly glad that she hadn't damaged it when she threw it across the room. "Plus, we still can't figure out what that mark on the cover meant."

"So this is what being a hunter is about?" she asked, looking around the expansive library. It was a truly beautiful space, vast rows of hardcover books interspersed with quiet nooks that each held a comfortable chair and a lamp. It was the perfect place to curl up and lose an afternoon – or a month – and she itched to get her fingers on some of the volumes.

"This is the boring part," Dean said, closing one book and shoving it aside for another. "There's also the 'shooting bad things in the face' part, which is a little more my style."

She couldn't help smile at the face that Sam made in response. "Well, I'm afraid I can't help you with that part, but maybe I could give you a hand with all of this." She waved her hand at the piles of books.

"Sure," Sam said with a shrug. "You're welcome to, if you'd like. But...do you have any kind of experience with the occult, or the supernatural? Do you know what you'd be looking for?"

"No," she said briskly. "But I _am_ a trained research librarian, and this is what I do best."

 

 

**********

 

Sam's stomach was growling by the time Dean materialized from the kitchen with bowls of chili and bottles of beer. He accepted both gratefully, pleased by how well he'd managed to hold down his food all day. Ever since the first trial, eating had tended to be a hit-or-miss thing. On some days he was ravenous, and on others just the thought of food was enough to make his nauseous. Luckily, today was one of the better days.

"The Door of the Worlds," Sam announced, holding the red journal aloft and waving it at Dean. Dean sat down a raised his eyebrows in surprise, taking a bite of his chili.

"You found it?"

" _We_ found it," Sam corrected him, giving Helen a smile. She may not have had much experience thus far with the supernatural, but she more than made up for it with her skills at cross-referencing. She'd taken one look at Sam's slapdash filing system and given him a single raised eyebrow, which was enough to make him blush and stammer like a kid called in front of the principal. With her help, Sam had discovered a reference in one of Bobby's books that quoted a passage from something called the _Temporix Codex_. And for once it appeared that luck was on their side, because the Men of Letters kept a copy of the Codex in their library.

"The Codex says something about how this book is a doorway that you can use to access other worlds."

"Other worlds," Dean said. "Like, other dimensions? Could we use that thing to get into and out of Purgatory?"

"I don't know. I mean, I don't think we can actually use it to _do_ anything. It's not like there's a manual for it. I don't know if the book itself is the key, or if there's a ritual surrounding it, or what. But listen to this. Someone made some notes in the margin of the Codex. It must have been one of the Men of Letters."

He cleared his throat and opened the Codex to the right page.

"The word 'worlds' is underlined here, and someone wrote, _Mistranslation? Similar in some dialects to the word 'possibilities'._

Dean stared at him. "Well, that clears everything right up."

"Yeah, I've got nothing," Sam admitted, pushing the book away. "But we've made some progress." He stretched his arms over his heads, his back a mass of knots from sitting curled up in the hard chair for hours. Helen sat next to him staring at her beer as if it contained the secrets of the universe.

"Is that what happened to me?" she asked. "Is the reason that I don't seem to exist here because I come from another world? What does that even mean?"

"I don't know," Sam said. He felt like he'd been saying that phrase a lot, and he could only imagine how sick Helen was of hearing it. "I know it's frustrating, but we'll get some answers. I promise you."

"But you're not going to promise that you can get me back to where I belong," she confirmed, eyes still on the bottle of beer.

And Sam was at a loss for words because, no, he _didn't_ want to make that promise, not when he still had no real idea of what it was they were dealing with. He looked up to see Dean's eyes flicking back and forth between Helen and him. His brother cleared his throat, getting Helen's attention, and she looked up at him for the first time.

"Well, I don't think we're going to get much more done on this tonight," Dean said. "I have a better idea. Helen, you've seen _Star Wars_ , right?"

A wrinkle appeared between her eyebrows, and she looked at Dean as if he'd gone crazy. "Yes," she said slowly. "Five times in the theater. Why?"

He grinned at her. "Yeah? You liked it? Man, I'm jealous. By the time they were re-released on the big screen here, all they had were the crappy Special Editions."

"I thought _Empire Strikes Back_ was even better," she said, eyes lighting up, then blushed and looked at the floor. "Sorry. I've always had a thing for sci-fi and fantasy."

"Well, that's clearly because you're a woman of taste," Dean said with a grin. "But I was just thinking about it, and...if I'm right, the third part of the trilogy wasn't released until...1983?" He looked at Sam for confirmation, who just shrugged.

"I guess?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure I'm right. Which means that someone here has never seen it." He raised his eyebrows at Helen. "And the Men of Letters built that screening room one floor down, _and_ I have Bobby's old collection of DVDs," he said triumphantly.

"Wait, Bobby owned copies of the _Star Wars_ movies?" Sam said in amusement.

"Widescreen original versions and everything," Dean confirmed, grinning at Sam. "If you can believe it, I found them in the box for _Backdoor Angels 12_."

Sam shook his head in bemused disgust. Whether it was the idea of Bobby disguising his movie preferences as porn, or of his brother immediately checking out the porn in the first place that disturbed him the most, he wasn't sure.

"Now, most discerning viewers still consider _Empire_ to be the high point of the trilogy," Dean said to Helen. "But I think you'll be able to appreciate some of the finer things that _Return of the Jedi_ has to offer. What do you say? You want to take a break?"

Sam could tell that Helen was doing her best to remain dignified, but he didn't miss the way her eyes lit up in anticipation.

"I'd like that," she said before her face brightened in a huge smile, and for the first time Sam could see the family resemblance between the woman and in front of him and the niece who didn't even know she existed.

"Sounds like a plan," Dean said, pushing back from the table and grabbing his beer. "Come on, Sammy. You too."

"But...I'm right in the middle of this research," Sam protested, but Dean just gave him a smack on the arm as he passed and told him to get his ass out of the chair. It wasn't fair. Dean may have liked to tease him constantly about being a giant nerd, but there was nothing to match his brother for sheer geekery when the mood took him.

"And make us some popcorn!" Dean called back over his shoulder as he left the room, Helen following behind.

"Whatever," Sam muttered. "And I'm only staying for Jabba!" he yelled back, just because.

In the end, he ended up sticking around until the Ewoks. Sam found himself watching Helen – and watching Dean watching Helen – more than the movie. He got a kick out of seeing his brother anticipate Helen's reactions and then light up with a grin when she responded with the cheers or laughs or cringes he'd clearly been expecting. It reminded Sam of his childhood, of tagging along behind his big brother who knew everything about everything and was the best and bravest person in the entire world. He thought again of his daydreams of Dean as a father, exposing his kids to his favorite classic movies and watching with pride when they grew to love the things he loved in return.

The combination of beer and nostalgia left him as melancholy as it usually did, and he finally escaped back upstairs to his books.

He still hadn't made much progress on the obscure symbol on the front of the red journal that had been obliterated by burn marks, and the lack of a good lead was starting to drive him crazy. He went to the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee, and when he got back to the library he froze in the doorway.

The air above the table was roiling and twisting, as if the very atmosphere had been put on a slow boil.

"Dean!" he called hoarsely, and in within a few seconds he heard his brother barreling up the stairs from the lower level. He almost plowed into Sam's back before he could stop himself.

"What the fuck?"

"I don't know!" Sam said. He could sense Helen on his other side, peering around his arm. "Is this the same thing as last time?"

The air bubbled, thick and viscous. Sam could see the other side of the library through the distorted air, and it looked like it was melting. Bookshelves twisted in on themselves and books swirled together in a riot of colors. It looked like something painted by Dali in a fever dream.

And then, with a loud crack that sounded like burning bones, the air split itself apart.

There was no lightning, no wind, just a neat _rip_ that floated a few feet above the table. There was no other way for Sam to describe it. It was as if giant hands had taken hold of the fabric of space and pulled until it broke. The inside of the rip was pitch black, the lights from the library illuminating nothing inside it. It gave him a queasy feeling to look at it, as if its very existence was wrong and repulsive. Just for an instant he had the strangest sensation that the rip was a fixed, solid point in space and time, with the universe floating around it, and it left him reeling.

"Jesus," Helen breathed.

Sam swallowed and took a step closer. Dean's fist tightened on the back of his shirt.

"Sam," he said warningly.

"Don't worry," Sam said. "I won't get too close."

The rip hung suspended over the table, an uneven shape several feet across at its widest. It didn't seem to be getting any larger, but he made sure to stay well away from the table regardless. Sam walked a few feet closer, but stopped before he was close enough to touch the table. The nearer he got, the more the ground reeled under him like the deck of a ship, and he had to take a deep breath and swallow down a rush of nausea. He could feel Dean just behind him, shadowing his every move.

When he was a few yards away from the rip, the darkness inside flickered and an image came to life.

At first, Sam thought he was looking straight through the rip to the other side of the library. But something about the image was odd, and it took him a moment to recognize a few subtle differences – a pile of books he'd left stacked on one of the tables was no longer there, the easy chair done up in burgundy leather instead of brown. A figure walked into view, and with a sickening shock, Sam realized that he was looking at an image of himself. His hair was several inches shorter, and a long scar twisted down his neck from his ear to his collarbone. The image of Sam turned his back to replace a book on the nearby shelves, and as he started to turn back around the vision darkened and the inside of the rip returned to inky blackness.

Sam took a couple of shuddering steps backward and collapsed in a chair, trying not to be sick all over the floor. He glanced up to see that Dean looked as green as he felt.

"What the hell is this?" His voice came out in a raw whisper.

Dean's face was pale, eyes wide and fixed on the rip. "Man, I don't even know."


	3. Chapter Three and Epilogue

 

 

 

Helen sat at the kitchen table, notebook in front of her, and watched as Sam took his turn doing the dishes.

It had been several days since the Big Rip – as they had taken to calling it – had opened in the air above the table in the library. Dean had sneaked close enough to grab the papers and books they'd been working with (including the mysterious red-covered journal), and by unspoken consensus they had moved the research into an empty conference room at the other end of the hall.

Surprisingly, the rip itself appeared to be stable, neither growing nor shrinking. Sam had uncovered a security camera and placed it in the corner of the room, connecting it somehow to his computer so they could keep an eye on it. (There were no wires involved that she could see. He'd tried to explain about something called "wifi", but she honestly hadn't cared about the details.)

At the moment, the computer showed an image of Dean in the library, sitting in a chair a few yards from the Rip and staring fixedly at it. Helen saw Sam give the screen a worried glance before returning to the sink.

Settling back in her chair, Helen smoothed the blank page in front of her and set pen to paper. In the days that had followed her appearance in this time and place, she had taken it upon herself to keep a diary of sorts – not of the official research that they were all trying to do, but just simple observations of daily life around her, memories of her old life and her family…whatever came to mind. Sam had offered her one of the nice, leather-bound blank books that lay around the place – "We have a million of them, seriously. The Men of Letters must have bought stock in the company," he'd said – but she chose a spiral-bound steno pad that reminded her of her college days. Dean kept up a running joke about providing her the daily lottery numbers so she could eventually strike it big when she got back to her own time. She laughed along with him, but as the days passed she found it harder to believe that she would ever be able to leave this building, let alone find her way home again. After her first disastrous attempt, she hadn't gone near the front door again.

She started her latest entry.

 

> _I guess I never thought the world would still exist in the twenty-first century, and yet here it is and it is nothing like what I might have imagined. The Cold War is over. There never was a nuclear attack. The Soviets are gone, and these two men were children when it happened. Do they remember what it was like then? I watch the news, and people are still so afraid. The world has changed in so many ways, but it seems as if some things will always be the same._
> 
> _Sam's computer is the most amazing thing I've ever seen. He showed me how to access an online encyclopedia. He left me alone and came back hours later, and I couldn't believe it. It felt as if seconds had passed. Does my job even exist in this time? What use does the world have for research librarians when the entire knowledge of the human race is just one push of a button away?_

 

She glanced up. Sam had finished up with the dishes and left at some point while she was writing. She looked over at the computer to see Dean still sitting motionless in front of the Rip. She knew that Sam was worried for him – these two brothers seemed to exist in a constant, unspoken state of worry about the other – and she didn't know if there was anything she could say to reassure him.

The vision that Sam had seen in the Rip was only the first of many. It seemed that proximity to the Rip triggered these images, and nobody was really sure what it was they were seeing. At first, the images seemed to be of the inside of the library – complete with a Sam and Dean who were just slightly different from the Sam and Dean she knew. Sam had been keeping careful notes of everything he had seen in the Rip, and encouraging Dean to do the same. For some reason, the camera he had installed wasn't picking up anything.

Helen wasn't sure whether to be encouraged or frightened by the fact that she'd never seen any images of herself in the Rip.

Sam stuck his head into the room. His face was alight with an excitement she hadn't seen since their first evening of research together.

"Hey," he said. "I think I might have found something. You want to come on down to the conference room? I'll grab Dean."

The conference room was the perfect blend of function and comfort, just like the rest of the building. Whoever these Men of Letters were that she kept hearing about, they certainly knew how to design a living space. Leather chairs were arranged around a set of tables that could be pushed together if needed. The three of them had taken over one of the tables with the books and computers that had been rescued from the library, and it was here that Helen spent most of her time every day.

She had just taken a seat when Sam entered, followed by Dean. He had a lost look on his face as if he had just awoken from a heavy sleep, and she didn't miss the worried looks that Sam was giving him.

"Okay," Sam said, pulling up a chair and grabbing a stack of papers. "So we've all been assuming that this is all linked to that blank red journal and some Ceremony of Closing that Bobby and Rufus performed back in 1982."

"Some closing," Dean scoffed, seeming to blink himself awake. "Whatever this ceremony was, I don't think it worked."

"That's what I thought too," Sam said. He pushed a piece of paper across the table for Dean and Helen to look at. "You remember that weird stamp, the one that was burned off the cover of the book? I think...." He glanced over at Dean, and Helen didn't know how to interpret the look on his face. "I think they're Enochian."

Dean's face clouded over. "Angels?" he said harshly.

"Maybe not," Sam said quickly. "Plenty of ancient cultures incorporated these symbols into their own mythologies. In fact, the way these symbols have been corrupted, I think that's probably what happened."

"Wait," Helen said, confused by the thunderous look on Dean's face. "I don't understand. You mean...actual angels? With wings and halos?" She had grown to accept the presence of the monsters that Sam and Dean apparently spent their lives hunting, but the idea of angels was a step too far.

"Yeah," Dean snorted, picking at the edge of the table with his fingernails. "Although less with the halos and more with the being interfering, narcissistic assholes."

Whatever the story behind those words, it appeared that Dean didn't want to share it, because he lapsed into a sullen silence. Sam cleared his throat awkwardly and pushed an open book across the table, pointing at a picture of various runes.

"So it looks like this symbol is related to the one for 'passage' or 'opening'. It looks kinda like the one we both drew, right?" He looked to Helen for confirmation, and she nodded. "Well, I figured that meant that the book opened something – a doorway of some kind. Like, maybe a doorway through time? That would explain why you ended up here, and why Bobby was trying to do a spell to close the door.

"That Codex," Helen said, rifling through her own notes to try to remember what they had found days ago. "It said something about the book being a doorway to other worlds." She remembered Sam's initial description of what he had seen in the Rip, of the other Sam with the shorter hair and the scar. "Do you think that's what you've been seeing?" she asked. "Yourselves in the future?"

Dean leaned his elbows on the table. "Well, I knew I'd get you to cut your hair eventually," he said. It was a half-hearted attempt at humor, but from Sam's small smile he appreciated the effort.

"I was actually thinking of something else in the Codex," he said. "Do you remember the note that one of the Men of Letters left in there? Something about the how the word 'worlds' should be translated 'probabilities'?" He waited for Helen and Dean to nod. "Well, I've been thinking about quantum mechanics."

"Of course you have," Dean muttered. Sam ignored him and turned to Helen.

"There's this idea that some things – very small things, like electrons – exist as sort of this wave function. You can't pin down information about exactly where it is and how much energy it has. You have to talk instead about the _probability_ of it having a certain energy state."

Helen remembered eating lunch at her desk not long after her promotion to head librarian. Matt had left his _Scientific American_ behind, and she was reading an article about the history of modern physics. It seemed like it happened in another lifetime, but it couldn't have been more than a few months ago. Something about what Sam was saying sounded so familiar.

"I've heard of this," she muttered, searching her memory. "Something...about a cat?"

"Yeah!" Sam said. "Schrödinger's cat!"

"Okay, can someone please get to the punch line?" Dean said impatiently. "What does this have to do with cats?"

"See, there's this idea that all of reality exists as this sort of probability wave that encompasses all different probabilities. Like, even something as simple as what shirt you put on this morning." Sam said. "And there are branch points where a different choice could have been made. You chose the blue shirt, but in another reality you picked the red shirt. The idea is that our universe is just part of a larger multiverse with an infinite number of other possible choices. This morning, when you chose the blue shirt, another universe branched off from ours where you made a different choice. And it's happening all the time. The further back in time that branching occurred, from our point of view, the more different that universe could possibly look compared to our own."

"I still don't see what this has to do with a cat," Dean said slowly.

Sam rolled his eyes. "Forget the damn cat. The point is...I think that what we're seeing isn't the future timeline of our universe. I think we're seeing other branches of the multiverse – other universes, with other Sams and Deans."

"Huh," Dean said, looking truly interested for the first time since he'd left the library. "That...would explain a lot, actually. So, somehow this book opened a window onto another universe?"

"Not just one. Have you noticed that the visions we're seeing in the Rip are different from each other? I think we're seeing a whole range of different universes, all occurring in the same physical space: the library. The one I saw last night had a bunch of different people I didn't recognize all sitting down in the library and talking together. What if that represents a universe where the Men of Letters survived?"

It would explain why she herself had never appeared in any of the Rip's images, Helen thought. In how many other universes would she have possibly ended up in this place? It was a lonely thought. Had she been dragged into this world from another universe entirely? She shivered.

"So, that's my theory," Sam said. "The question is...what do we do about it?"

 

**********

 

> _I can't decide if this place feels more like a museum or a tomb. Everything feels centuries old, and I can almost feel the ghosts of generations of hunters lurking in the corners. The stories these boys have told me must be getting to me._
> 
> _This building holds secrets, more than I can even begin to fathom. The library itself…I could spend a lifetime and not be able to make my way through half of it. Sam and Dean watch each other like hawks while pretending not to watch. Sam is sick, though he pretends he isn't, and Dean pretends right along with him. If they have other friends or family, I haven't seen any sign of them._
> 
> _They must be terribly lonely._

 

Helen closed her notebook and leaned her head back against the back of the armchair, closing her eyes. She had found a small room near the library that must have been somebody's office once, and she had escaped to it when Sam and Dean hashed out their latest theories in the conference room.

She probably should be in there with them – this entire thing being a matter that intimately concerned her, after all – but after several long days of research her brain was threatening to fold in on itself. She'd spent enough years in school to know how important it was to take a mental break when necessary, and so she'd escaped here.

It was amazing how many hidden nooks this building held, and in the days since she's arrived she hadn't done more than explore the main floor. There were clearly spaces that Sam and Dean considered to be off-limits, although they hadn't come out and said so and she hadn't pushed. If her adventures had taught her anything, it was that even something as innocuous as a book could be a weapon powerful enough to tear universes apart. She had no desire to pry into the secrets that lay hidden within these walls.

The muffled voices from the brothers across the hall were raised in apparent disagreement for a moment before dropping back to a low murmur. Helen kept her eyes closed and smiled tiredly. She had never had a brother of her own, but if the relationship between Sam and Dean was anything like the one between her and Betty, then she would bet that they got into more than their fair share of friendly – and occasionally not so friendly – arguments. There was nothing like family for getting under your skin, crawling around your defenses and into the soft places you kept hidden from the rest of the world.

It was obvious to anyone who laid eyes on the pair that Dean was the older brother, all fierce, protective love that he struggled to keep leashed around a younger brother who clearly chafed under his control but loved him back just as strongly. Helen hadn't done more than piece together the barest outline of their lives, but it was clear that their history was littered with a violence and tragedy that would have torn most people apart. From what she understood, their father was dead, killed by the kind life they had been raised in. It was clear that they didn't have a mother in their lives – whether dead or estranged, she wasn't sure, but the lack of a maternal presence was palpable.

A person with any sense at all might have taken that as a sign that they were on a path that was sure to end badly, and perhaps these brothers knew exactly how terrible their ends would be. It reminded her of her readings on Norse mythology, the _Ragnarok_ and the gods who knew that the war they fought would lead inevitably to their own downfall. She wondered how they could fight on, knowing what was to come.

Her maudlin thoughts were interrupted when Dean leaned his head in the door. He gave a smile on seeing her and came inside, easing himself into one of the chair across from her.

"Anything new?" she asked. Dean shook his head and leaned back into his chair, mirroring her posture. The skin under his eyes was thin and dark, and she wondered how much sleep he was used to getting.

"I think we're done for the night," he said, scrubbing his hand through his hair until it stood up in spikes. "I'm at the point where none of this is making sense to me, so I think I'm going to sleep on it." He leaned forward in the chair, and Helen winced at the audible crack his back made. "You need anything before I head down?"

Helen shook her head and collected her notebook. "I'm going to bed myself," she said. She opened her mouth and hesitated, unsure whether she could bring herself to ask something she had been wondering about. Dean raised an eyebrow and waited.

"Why me?" she asked. Dean frowned, and she rushed to explain. "I mean...is there a reason that _I'm_ here and not someone else? Is there something about me that triggered the book, or could it have been anyone?" She held her breath, unsure of which answer frightened her more – that she had a part to play and there was a path laid out for her that she was doomed to follow, or that she was a bit of detritus caught up by the tide of an uncaring universe. Dean's face softened, and he looked around the room.

"My dad's side of the family were Men of Letters," he said softly, eyes fixed on the empty desk that sat tucked into one corner. "My mom's side were hunters. I used to wonder, sometimes, what it would have been like to be raised by a normal family. But the way we grew up, hunting evil sons of bitches?" He shrugged. "As weird as it was, I always figured it was what I'd end up doing too. My choice, you know?" He gave a crooked smile. "Of course, that was before I found out how Sam and me, we'd been...been _bred_ ," – he spat the word – "to be what we are. Bloodlines and destinies and all kinds of crap, you know?" She didn't know, but she nodded all the same.

"I don't know why you're here," Dean said, finally looking at her, and she couldn't take her eyes off his face and the haunted expression that twisted it. "I don't know if the universe has a plan for you, or if it was sheer dumb luck. All I know is...it doesn't matter. In the end, it's what we do on the path, not how we ended up on it. We act as if it was our choice all along. At least, that's what I keep telling myself."

The smile he gave her was hollow, and then he was gone, and she could finally breathe again.

 

**********

 

Sam was reading in bed when Dean knocked on his door.

"Hey," he said, surprised at the formality. Dean usually had a habit of barging in without asking first. "Come on in."

Dean entered, dressed for bed in his ridiculous robe and slippers. He dug his hands into the pockets and glanced around the room. "You know, you should think about fixing this place up," he said.

Sam looked around, taking in the bare walls and empty desk. For as long as he had been craving a normal life, he found it interesting that it was Dean who had found it easier to settle into this place and make a real home for himself. Sam had thought for so long that Dean was born to be on the open road, that he would go stir-crazy if he wasn't able to go halfway across the country on a moment's whim, living out of his trunk with nothing to tie him down. It still surprised him, how much simple joy Dean took from having his own room and bed.

Dean sat down on the end of Sam's bed, staring at the floor between his feet. Sam put the book away and waited. Dean in an introspective mood was a rare thing, and he knew better than to push with questions.

"You've been spending a lot of time in front of the Rip," Sam said eventually when the silence stretched on. He figured it was as good an opener as any.

"Hell of thing," Dean mused, twisting the sash of his robe around his fingers. "All those different worlds where I made a different choice. I wonder what those universes are like?"

"Well," Sam said carefully. "I'm sure there's a universe where you're wearing a better robe."

Dean snorted. "I'm serious, Sammy," he said quietly. "There's a world out there where I drove just a little faster, got to Cold Oak in time. Where I stayed away from Lisa and Ben, instead of letting the monsters near them. Where I stayed on the rack, no matter how many times that bastard Alistair offered me a way down."

And this was exactly what Sam had been afraid of, once he'd figured out what they were dealing with. Having the evidence right there in his face of the other path not taken was sure to reawaken the guilt and self-doubt that were woven into the very fiber of Dean's being. It wasn't possible for him _not_ to obsess about all of the wrong calls he thought he'd made over the years.

"You can't think like that, Dean," he said firmly. "What about the worlds where you're not alive anymore? What about the realities that don't exist anymore because you didn't make the right choice to save them? Believe me," he said with a tired laugh, "I get it. More than anyone, I get what it's like to look back and focus on all of the ways I've screwed up. But you can't. _We_ can't. It doesn't matter how many other realities there are out there. This is the only one we live in, and this is the one we can make a difference in."

Dean didn't look entirely convinced, but the corner of his lips turned up and he nodded. "Get some sleep," he said, patting Sam on his blanket-covered leg and standing up. "We still need to figure out what we're going to do about Helen, and about that big hole in the universe. I want my library back."

Sam did his best to fall asleep after Dean left, but his mind was too preoccupied. If he was correct that the book that Bobby had found had opened up a window to other universes...well, why had it happened here? And now? And how were they going to put everything back where it was supposed to be?

He had finally managed to doze off when he jolted awake by a noise coming from upstairs. He thought it might have been Dean calling for help. He tore off the covers and ran for the stairs, taking a moment to pop his head into Dean's bedroom. Empty.

The first thing Sam noticed when he skidded into the library was that the Rip had gotten bigger. It now spread at least a dozen feet wide, its edges pulsing where before they had been smooth. Arcs of lightning flickered inside its maw. Dean stood only a few feet away, swaying on his feet.

"Dean!"

He didn't look back. Sam ran forward, pushing through the nausea and vertigo that enveloped him whenever he tried to get too close the Rip. He grabbed Dean by the arm and dragged him away into the corner of the library. His brother's face was white, sweat dripping from his chin, and he looked wildly at Sam as if he didn't recognize him.

"Dean, you okay?" Sam shook him by the shoulders when he didn't answer. "Hey!"

Suddenly Dean shoved Sam away furiously and produced a handgun from the inside of his robe. He lifted it and cocked it in one fluid motion, aiming it right at Sam's head.

"Shit!" Sam stumbled backward and raising his hands defensively. "Dean, what the hell? It's me! What are you doing?"

Dean shook his head, a sneer marring his face. "You're not him. You're not _Sam_ ," he hissed. "I don't know who the hell you think you are, but you're not my brother."

Sam gaped at him, his mind racing to try to figure out the safest thing to say. Dean's voice shook, but his hand was rock steady on the gun, as he had been trained for his whole life. Sam knew better than to try to jump him.

"I watched you die," Dean said, his voice anguished. "I burned your body myself. I don't know who the fuck you think you are, wearing his face like it belongs to you, but...."

"Dean!" Sam kept his hands raised, focusing on his brother's eyes and doing his best to ignore the gun. "I swear to you that it's me. You never burned my body. I swear to God, you were in my bedroom just an hour ago, talking to me. Don't you remember?" He held himself as steady as he could, but was unable to completely control the tremble in his voice.

Dean blinked, and the gun wavered. As his hand started to drop, Sam swooped in and grabbed the weapon and flicked the safety on. Dean's legs buckled, and Sam barely caught him in time to lower him to the floor. He sat down on the floor next to Dean, shoving the gun away from them both so it went spinning off into the shadows across the cold, smooth floor.

"Sammy?" Dean's voice was hoarse, and Sam almost melted in relief.

"Yeah," he croaked. "You okay? What the fuck was that?"

"I don't know," Dean said, looking up at the pulsing Rip. "I was just standing there watching it, and…it's like, for a few minutes my whole life was different. I could remember the day you died – six years ago, on a hunt in Omaha. It didn't feel like a dream. I remember it happening." He clutched at his head, wincing.

"Come on," Sam muttered, dragging Dean to his feet and propelling him out the room to the kitchen. He shoved Dean into one of the chairs and grabbed a glass from the cupboard, pouring him a couple of fingers of whiskey. Dean took a long swallow and coughed into his sleeve.

"Shit."

"Yeah," Sam agreed, grabbing Dean's glass away from him for a long sip of his own. Dean gave him a half-hearted punch on the arm.

"You saw what happened to the Rip?" Dean said.

Sam nodded. "I don't think we're just seeing pictures anymore," he said. "What you said, about your whole life being different? What if those other realities are starting to bleed into our own?"

Dean's eyes widened. "We have to figure out a way to close this, and we have to do it now."

 

**********

 

Helen sat in the conference room with a cup of coffee that had gone cold an hour ago. She couldn't seem to work up the energy to make a fresh batch.

The change in the Rip had been the first thing she'd seen that morning when she'd come upstairs, and she'd immediately headed to the kitchen to find out what was going on. From the low murmurs she heard from the hallway, Dean and Sam were inside talking to each other. She knew she shouldn't eavesdrop, but she had found herself pausing just outside the door and listening on their conversation.

"It's gotten too dangerous," Sam had said in a low voice. "After what happened last night, I don't think we should risk anyone being alone in the library for now."

"Agreed," Dean had said fervently. "But we still haven't figured out how to close it." He had paused then, and Helen had heard the sounds of eggs being cracked against the side of a bowl. "And if we do?" he'd continued. "Will that fix Helen, or will she end up stuck here forever like a ghost?"

"I don't know," Sam had said, and Helen had fled to the conference room before she could hear anymore.

Absently, she flipped to a new page in her steno book.

 

> _The more I learn about this wide new world I live in, the smaller it seems to become. There is an entire universe out there I want to explore, but I feel as if I am on the outside looking in. Sam and Dean have done their best to make me feel welcome, but I don't feel as if I truly belong here. They are tied together by blood and destiny in a way I can scarcely imagine. In a way, they don't seem to belong to this world any more than I do. Maybe their fate is to save the world without ever truly living in it. I wonder what my fate is?_
> 
> _If I don't belong to this time, do I belong to any time at all? Is there a world where I am missed, where my friends and family mourn my absence?_
> 
> _For my sake, I wish that the answer is yes. For theirs...I hope that it's no._

 

She looked up, startled, when Dean dropped a plate of toast in front of her, along with a fresh cup of coffee.

"Didn't mean to scare you," he said. "You missed breakfast. I figured you'd be hungry."

And she was, suddenly. Ravenously hungry, and she dove into the buttered toast as if she hadn't eaten for a week.

"You heard us talking in the kitchen."

It wasn't a question, and it wasn't an accusation. It was just a statement of fact, and she acknowledged it as such.

"Yes," she said. No apology required.

"We're going to fix this," he told her, and she gave a wistful smile at the confidence in his voice.

"If Sam's right, even if you do, there will be just be another universe somewhere where you don't," she said.

Dean barked out a laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "You've got me there," he admitted, then sighed. "This would be so much easier if there was something behind this I could point my gun at, you know? I need a bad guy to fight against, not this universe crap. At this point, I've seen more lives and afterlives and alternate realities than any one man should."

"Afterlives?"

He winced, as if he hadn't meant to let that particular word slip out.

"In our line of work, you tend to see death from both ends," he said cryptically.

She ran the corner of her fingers over the cover of her notebook. "So there _is_ an afterlife. I'd always wondered about that."

Dean shrugged. "Heaven, hell, all that good stuff...yeah, it's all there. In a sense." He ran his hands over his face, looking as if he hadn't slept for days. "Don't know that it's worth it, though. Sometimes I think my perfect idea of heaven would be falling asleep and just...not waking up."

A shiver ran up her back at the sheer hopelessness in his voice, but Sam came in before she could respond and settled himself at the table. "You told her about last night?" he asked.

Dean collected himself with a shrug and looked at her. "The Rip is bigger, and the different realities may be bleeding into each other," he said succinctly. "There, now you're caught up."

Sam made a face. "Well, I might have an explanation," he said, pulling out the red-bound journal and dropping it on the table. "See, I figured that Bobby and Rufus did something to this book to keep it from opening up a rift between universes. But what if this book is the thing that _closes_ the Rip? What if the rift was already there, and this book is a key that locks, not unlocks?"

He pulled out the Codex and dropped it on the table. "I was reading through this again, and I think we've been misinterpreting the part about the book being a doorway. What it's more like...a _door?_ "

Dean licked his lips and blinked. "Okay. And the difference is...?"

"Like, the door _way_ , the opening, is already there," Sam said excitedly. "This book is the door, the thing that closes the opening. I mean, we all know that the walls between realities are thinner in some places than others. What if Bobby and Rufus knew about a thin spot that existed in Sioux Falls in October, 1982?"

"And there's another thin spot here?" Helen asked.

"Yeah," Dean said, clearly warming to the idea. "I mean, this entire place is full of every kind of mystical talisman and supernatural piece of crap you could get your hands on. It's got to be a massive hot spot for any kind of weirdness. I wouldn't be surprised if the Men of Letters had built their bunker at this exact location for that reason. They'd probably have all kinds of reasons for wanting access to a weak spot between realities. The question is, why did this one open up now?"

"It's me."

The words were out of Helen's mouth before she realized she'd said them.

"It has to be me," she repeated, thinking out loud. "The book was dormant until you brought it here, right? And then...I appeared here, and after that the Rip opened. It has to be related somehow."

Dean and Sam exchanged a glance. "I think you might be right," Sam admitted.

"But that doesn't mean it's your fault," Dean said firmly.

Sam held up the book and pointed to the scorch mark. "I think it was damaged when it brought you here. And that's the other thing." He held up a piece of paper covered with words scribbled in a messy script. Helen's breath caught in her throat. It was the same paper Bob Colt had read from back in Sioux Falls. "I found a copy of Bobby's Ritual of Closing in one of the boxes, but...I don't know if the book will even work anymore."

"I don't think we have a choice," Dean said, eyes fixed on the doorway. "We can't let that rip get any bigger. We have to try."

 

**********

 

Helen looked up when Sam knocked on the edge of her open bedroom door.

"Ready?" he asked.

She had escaped to her sanctuary for a few minutes of alone time while the two brothers reviewed their Latin and collected the supplies for the Ritual of Closing they were going to attempt to perform. When she thought of the last ritual she'd witnessed, her hands began to shake.

"Hey," Sam said softly, coming into the room. "If you want to stay here, that would be fine. Dean and I can handle the ritual."

A part of her wanted badly to stay right there, preferably with the door locked. But it felt wrong for her not to be there. Even though Sam and Dean had both reassured her that she wasn't to blame for what had happened, she still felt responsible.

"No," she said, rising from the bed and taking hold of the red-bound journal that she'd carried down with her for some inexplicable reason – maybe because it was the only physical thing in this world that linked her to her own time. "I'll be right up," she said, giving Sam her bravest smile. He gave her a reassuring smile in returned and disappeared.

A deep sense of unease sat heavy in her stomach, growing with each slow step she took toward the door. She desperately wanted to believe that it was just anticipation about the ritual and that afterwards she would be able to laugh it off, but she was having a hard time picturing what _afterwards_ would look like. Would she be back in her own world, her own time? Would she keep her knowledge of the Winchesters and the future they lived in, or would it melt away like a dream under the harsh light of day? Or maybe – and more likely – she would end up trapped in her own future, a ghost without friends or family, forced to make her own way in a world she didn't belong to.

She forced down a shudder and gripped the journal more tightly. No matter what the outcome, it had to be better than the limbo she'd found herself trapped in.

As she passed the desk that sat in the corner of the room, she hesitated and grabbed her steno diary. She scribbled a note on the first page – deliberately left blank until now – and then tore all of the written pages neatly out of the notebook. She folded them and tucked them into the red journal. The logical part of her mind – the part that still had trouble believing that she had just been sitting there talking over alternate universes as if it was no big deal – laughed at the melodramatic gesture.

 _Just in case,_ she couldn't help thinking. _Just in case._

The Rip in the library had grown even larger since the last time she had seen it, stretching a good twenty or so feet across. It was inky black inside, and the she could feel the pressure from the air on her eardrums. She wondered if she fell inside if she would keep falling forever, and she shuddered.

"You're sure you want to watch?" Dean asked, crossing the room and taking the red journal from her.

She nodded, eyes fixed on the gaping tear in the fabric of space that threatened to swallow the entire world.

"Okay," Dean said. "You stay here by the door, okay? Sam and I will be over there. And if this works? Hopefully you'll be able to go outside when we're done."

"Yeah," she said, a lump in her throat because he sounded so sure when he said it and she knew how unsure he really was. "Thank you. You and Sam, for everything."

He gave her shoulder a squeeze of reassurance, nodded his thanks, and got back to work. Helen leaned against the door jamb to watch.

A small table had been set up a dozen feet away from the growing rift. Dean laid the book on the table and took a small leather bag from his pocket, dumping the contents on the table in a circle around the book. He held up a silver lighter and raised his eyebrows at Sam.

"Ready?"

Sam nodded and began to read from the paper in a smooth, practiced voice. Dean flicked the lighter to life and leaned over the feed the flame into the circle of herbs. A wind began to blow, and Helen clutched the edges of the door tightly, heart pounding. It seemed unreal that she had seen this same ritual performed just a few days ago. It felt like a lifetime.

The air thickened and began to pulse like the beat of a giant heart, and Helen felt her own heartbeat fall into a sympathetic rhythm. Lightning flickered in the gaping mouth of the Rip, reaching out to touch the book inside its circle of flames. The wind rose to a howl, and Sam's voice rose in counterpoint until he was almost shouting the Latin words into the heart of the storm. Images began to appear in the Rip, and now Helen knew that she was seeing other worlds, other universes. They flicked past her sight, one after the other, an infinite number of possibilities.

"Why isn't it working?" she heard Dean shout in frustration.

"It's the book," Sam yelled back. "It must have been damaged." He hesitated. "Dean, I have to..."

"No," Dean said fiercely. "Sam, don't you fucking dare!"

"It needs an energy source!" Sam said in frustration. "It isn't enough!"

Helen gasped for breath and held tightly to the door, realizing that she was watching the continuation of an argument that had begun without her.

"Then it can use me," Dean said firmly. "You don't have the energy to spare. No, don't you look at me that way. You know what I'm talking about."

"Dean..."

"And if the worst happens? You have to be the one to finish the trials."

They were talking about using _themselves_ as an energy source for the book, she realized, and a well of anger rose up in her. Anger at herself for her own cowardice, anger at these two boys arguing over which would be the one to sacrifice himself, anger at the universe for putting them in a position where they'd have to do it, over and over and over.

 _No,_ she thought fiercely, directing her anger at the howling void of the Rip in front of her. _You can't have them._

She was moving before she'd even planned to do so, walking on shaky legs across the room until she was standing in front of the book. Dean's eyes widened when he saw her.

"No," he said, "Helen, don't...."

And she reached out and touched the book.

As it had during the first ritual, the world around her slowed to a crawl. She could see Dean and Sam beside her, reaching out to grab her, but they were too late. The pulse of the air beat against her skin like a blow, until she felt as if she would be shaken apart.

And it was shaking her apart, she realized, clenching her teeth to hold as tightly to the book as she could for as long as possible. She stared into the void, eyes streaming with tears, and watched the all of the possibilities she would never have flip past her like the pages of a book.

The book began to glow brightly under her hand, and with a sudden burst of insight she realized that she was just continuing her part of the ritual that had begun over thirty years ago. To close the door, it would take every last bit of strength she had to give – enough to erase even the memory of her existence from the universe she needed to save. There would be no heaven or hell for her, only oblivion.

She could feel the truth of it in her bones. In the end, it didn't matter at all how she'd arrived on this path, by chance or design. These few days of her strange half-life with the Winchester brothers in Lebanon, Kansas – existing but not – had not been an escape, but a reprieve. And now it was time to act as if it had been her choice all along. It was time to collapse the wave and finish the job.

The moment of clarity passed and was gone, her choice made almost before she was aware of it. She hung on to the book and screamed aloud as the wind tore through her, pulling at her thoughts and memories and sense of self. The blackness of the Rip reached out and swallowed her in its darkness, a tiny candle flickering out.

 _I was here,_ she thought fiercely, over and over, until the very words were ripped away and she blinked out of existence.

_I was here._

 

 

Sam heaved the last shelf into place, his muscles shaking from the strain, and held it in place until Dean nodded his okay to drop it.

"Well, that's it," Dean said, dusting his hands off and surveying the wreck of the library.

The gale that had torn through the room at the end of the ritual had ripped many of the books from their shelves and even knocked some of the heavy shelving units over. Sam had a knot on his head from where he had been flung backwards as the Rip collapsed and sealed itself, and Dean had a scrape up from the side of his face from sliding across the floor.

The only thing not disturbed was a small table in the center of the room, on which sat a red-bound journal with blank pages.

"So much for my filing system," Sam said mournfully, looking at all of the books scattered across the room.

"Cheer up," Dean said, slapping him on the shoulder. "We just saved the world, and you get the chance to organize everything again. I call that a win-win."

"Shut up," Sam muttered, but he couldn't really argue. He stretched his sore muscles out and looked around the room. Aside from the mess, there was nothing out of the ordinary. The Rip was gone, with no sign that it had ever been there. In the end, the book had done its job.

"Dean," he said hesitantly. "What happened there at the end? I didn't seem like the book had enough energy. I thought one of us was going to have to..."

"I don't know," Dean said thoughtfully. "I mean, I thought the same thing. But then it started working, didn't it? I'm not exactly inclined to look a gift horse in the mouth." He walked over to the table and picked up the book hesitantly. "We'd better find a safe place for this in case we need to close any more doors between universes."

Dean rifled the pages and looked down, frowning. "Sam? I thought this book was empty."

"It was," Sam said, walking over to see what Dean was looking at. "All of the pages were blank."

Dean held up a folded sheaf of paper that had been tucked inside the blank journal and raised his eyebrow. "Did you put these in here?"

"No," Sam said in confusion. "Where did they come from?"

"No idea," Dean said. He opened the pages while Sam watched over his shoulder.

They were covered in a neat handwriting that Sam didn't recognize. The top sheet was written in a script that was a little sloppier than the others, as if the writer had been in a hurry.

"What the hell?" Dean said. "They're addressed to us." He cleared his throat and read aloud.

 

> _Sam and Dean,_
> 
> _I have almost no hope that you will read these, if all goes as badly as I fear it will. Maybe the words will vanish along with the rest of me, but I hope that the magic of the book will somehow protect them. They're all I have left of myself._
> 
> _My name is Helen Louise Murphy, and I never existed...._

 

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> First of all, a huge thank you to on_verra, both for the beautiful artwork you created and the invaluable notes you made about the story. You were a joy to work with, and you did so much to help turn this story into what I had imagined it could be.
> 
> A massive thank you to my beta enigmaticblues, who did a fantastic job as always. You are always such a huge help, and I appreciate it more than I can say. Any remaining errors in the fic are entirely my own.
> 
> Finally, thank you to everyone on my flist who listened to me whine and angst my way through the writing process, and to wendy and thehighwaywoman for running such a tight ship.
> 
> I hope you enjoy the story. Comments are always welcome. :)


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